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Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe

It doesn’t have to do anything but arrive

Someone with a cruel mouth and a spiteful demeanour announced the other day that all car advertisements should carry a government health warning. "Driving while pregnant harms your baby." "Cars lower your sperm count." That sort of thing.

This would be a pity because apart from Griff Rhys Jones in his underpants and Mazda's international zoom-zoom efforts, almost all car advertisements are better than almost all the programmes they help to fund.

It was always thus. Back in the early Sixties television commercials were rammed with smiley people cramming as much information as was humanly possible into the 30-second slot. Prices, ingredients, comparisons. The lot.

Then in 1963 along came an advertisement for the VW Beetle. Written by Bill Bernbach at Dingleberry, Dunkirk and Bedhopper, it showed a pair of headlights picking their way through a blizzard and arriving at a big wooden hut. The doors opened and out came